Look for the scratch and dent items.
Everyone loves unpacking a brand new gadget for the first time and releasing the squeaky clean device from its Styrofoam tomb, but if you stumble upon a lightly bruised product, you should be seeing dollar signs.
“If I see a small scratch, or open packaging, or a button missing, or some small flaw, it doesn’t hurt to ask if they can take extra off for that defect,” says Storm. “They may knock 10 or 20 percent off the price. It’s something you may have bought anyway despite the defect, but it can give you some bargaining power when you buy it.”
And let’s be honest: You’re probably going to put a nice gouge in that new digital camera after a couple trips to Senor Frog’s anyway.
Anticipate future sales.
That brand new laptop you fell in love with isn’t on sale. Bummer. But before you tote it up to register and shell out full price, take a moment to ask an employee whether it might be headed for a price drop soon. Silly as it seems, most of them have no problem spilling the beans when they’re aware of future sales.
“A lot of times, the salespeople will tell you: ‘You know what, this is going on sale tomorrow,’” says Storm. “They know that if you’re getting a good deal on that, you’re more likely to come back over and over.”
If you’re too late – or just impatient – many retailers also offer price drop protection, allowing you to bring in a receipt for an item you just bought and have the difference refunded if it goes on sale shortly thereafter.
Take advantage of price matching.
When a long day of comparison shopping lands you at the retailer with the highest price on an item, don’t resign yourself to yet another car trip back across town to get it. Many retailers offer price matching and even accept competitors’ coupons as a last-ditch effort to get you to drop dollars in their coffers, rather than somewhere else. But you’ll need to be prepared.
“Competitor price matching is a good deal, if you’ve done a bit of research, but if you haven’t, they’re not going to honor it because you’re just going to be vague about it,” says Fiedler. “They want to usually see an ad that has it. Sometimes they’ll call the other store for you and check out the advertised price, and whether they have it in stock or not.”
If the other store has run out of an item, be prepared to pay full price. And don’t even bother with Internet prices, which most retailers have long exempted from price matching.
Showing 6 comments
RSSThis way we can save extra money. I have read your blog and this is quite interesting blog. I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. As a consumer we should know about this. That's indeed a good post. Thanks for the article.
spielen
As consumers, we are all trying to make do and get as much as possible for each dollar spent. Lately my family and I have been doing more research before buying anything, and have also done more online shopping and looked harder for better deals.
One of the online sites we have found to be useful is:
http://www.uberi.com
They do have some interesting bargains listed that are not available even on price search engines. We were able to get more for each dollar. Hope that's useful info for some. Also, I recommend checking out the Amazon Discount Table and the "Free Shipping Filler", which I find quite useful and amusing.
For bargain hunting, pic2shop scans barcodes "live" even on the iPhone 3G and looks up online prices.
It is free!
http://www.zingsale.com